Kazimierz Cardinal Swiatek

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Kazimierz Cardinal Swiatek, Polish Roman Catholic cleric (born Oct. 21, 1914, Valga, Estonia, Russian Empire [now in Estonia]—died July 21, 2011, Pinsk, Belarus), braved a Soviet death sentence (1941) and survived harsh conditions for nearly a decade (1944–54) in the Siberian Gulag before devoting his life to providing for the Roman Catholic faithful and restoring the church after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1922 Swiatek’s family moved to Pinsk, which was then in Poland. He entered a seminary there in 1933 and was ordained a priest in 1939. He was arrested by the KGB in 1941 but escaped his death sentence in the chaos of the Nazi invasion. He was arrested again in 1944 and was sent to a forced labour lumber camp in Siberia. He faced heavy governmental opposition when he returned (1954) to preach in Pinsk (by then in Belorussia, U.S.S.R.); his church was one of the few Roman Catholic churches in the Soviet Union, drawing worshippers from thousands of kilometres away. Pope John Paul II elevated Swiatek to bishop (1989) and then archbishop (1991) of Minsk-Mogilev in Belarus. He was made a cardinal in 1994 but was too old to vote in the 2005 papal election. Pope John Paul II in 2004 awarded him the Fidei Testis award for his work.

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